The Fort Riley Soldiers Go to Fort Larned to Horse Race With Cheyennes,
Comanches and Kiowas.
The Indians are great people for sport and amusement and it would be
difficult to imagine a more inveterate gambler. Their greatest ambition
is to excel in strength and endurance.
Several times as our coaches meandered across the plains, we came upon
the lodges of thousands of Indians, where the male population were
trying their skill at horse-racing. Even the small boys, many times as
many as fifteen or twenty, would be horse-racing and the chiefs would be
betting upon their favorites.
For their race tracks, they dug ditches about four feet apart and threw
up the sod and dirt between the ditches. The whole tribe then packed the
ground in the tracks hard and smooth by riding their horses up and down
those tracks to pack the dirt still more firmly. These tracks were
generally one and one-eighth miles long. The Indians would then select a
horse which they regarded as especially swift and banter the soldiers
for a horse race, which the soldiers were quick to accept, if they were
lucky enough to get a furlough. These Fort Riley soldiers always brought
their best horses to Fort Larned to race against the Indians'
race ponies.
Once during the summer of 1863 when there were only a few white people
at Fort Larned, the Indians, about 15,000 strong, commenced preparation
for a horse race between themselves and the Fort Riley soldiers.
Everything was completed and the Indian ponies were in good trim to beat
the soldiers. The Indians had placed their stakes consisting of ponies,
buffalo robes, deer skins, trinkets of all kinds and characters, in the
hands of their squaws. Then the Fort Riley soldiers came and the betting
was exciting in the extreme, the soldiers betting silver dollars against
their ponies, etc. The soldiers were victorious and highly pleased over
the winnings. The Indians handed the bets over manfully and without a
flinch, but one Indian afterward told me that they had certainly
expected to have been treated to at least a smoke or a drink of "fire
water;" but the soldiers rode away laughing and joking and promised the
Indians to return in "two moons," perhaps "three moons," in response to
their invitation. I was at this race and joined in the sport. Everything
was as pleasant as could be. There was no disturbance of any kind and
the soldiers took their "booty" and, as a matter of fact, did not even
invite the Indians to smoke a consolation pipe.
During the fall of 1863 a small band of Comanches and Kiowas went to
Texas and procured a white faced, white footed, tall, slim black
stallion for racing purposes. In elation they notified the Fort Riley
soldiers to come again. This time, not only did the Fort Riley soldiers
come, but citizens from all over the whole country for a distance of
from 300 to 500 miles came to see the fun. There were from twenty to
thirty thousand Indians there, and the Indians who invited them prepared
to take care of a large crowd in good style, so confident were they that
this time "the pot" would be theirs. They had hunted down, killed and
dressed some fifty or sixty buffalo, and had them cooking whole, in the
ground--barbecuing the meats. This time the putting up of the bets
before the races came off was still more exciting than at the previous
race, for the Indians had from 500 to 1,000 ponies to put up. The white
men matched their money against the ponies of the Indians. The race had
begun. As it proceeded, shouts of "Hooray, hooray," the Indians' black
stallion is ahead, 100 feet in advance of the soldiers' horse, he goes.
The race is won, and the black stallion stands erect and excited, proud
and defiant, and has won the laurel for his man, and seems to know that
the trophy is theirs. All had placed their bets in the hands of the
squaws for the spokesman, Little Ravin, the orator and regular dude of
the Arapahoes, gave the white people to understand that everything would
be safe in the hands of the squaws he had selected to hold stakes. These
squaws proved true to their trust. After the distribution of the
winnings, Little Ravin told the soldiers to stay and eat. Everybody grew
merry. The soldiers went to the government dining room there at Fort
Larned and got all the knives and forks they could rake and scrape
together and took them to the barbecue. When the Indians saw that the
white people had entered into the banquet with such enthusiasm and zest
they went to the settlers' store and bought two or three hundred dollars
worth of candies, canned goods of all kinds, crackers, etc., to make
their variety larger. They also bought 50 boxes of cigars with which to
treat the citizens and soldiers. When everything was in readiness for
the feast, the white men all stood up near the feast with a few of the
greatest chiefs of the several tribes, while the other Indians who were
not acting as waiters, to see that the choicest pieces of buffalo meat
were given their guests, stood in a ring back of the white guests, and
did not attempt to satisfy their hunger until after the whites had
demonstrated that they had feasted to the brim. This was one of the most
amusing incidents of my life on the frontier, and the Fort Riley boys
felt that in this treatment, they had been dealt a blow to their own
generosity, and one of the soldiers acting as spokesman, told the
Indians that they were ashamed of their own lack of hospitality when
they were the winners of the other race. This pleased the Indians
greatly, and they fell an easy victim to the duplicity of the soldiers
and made a contract to sell their black stallion racing horse to them
for the sum of $2,000, which sale was to be completed 60 days later if
the soldiers still wanted the purchase of the horse, at which time they
were to notify the Chief, and he was to bring or send him to Fort Riley.
This was a great sacrifice, but the ignorant Indian was not aware of it.
During the 60 days before the Indian brought the horse in and received
their money one soldier went up to St. Joe and sold this horse, so I
have been told for the sum of $10,000 in cash, but for the truth of this
statement I will not vouch.
It is a picturesque sight to watch the Indians move camp. Their trains
often covered several hundred acres of land. The Indians usually move in
a large body, or band. Their moving "van" consists of two long slim
poles placed on each side of a pony, made fast by means of straps tanned
by the squaws from buckskin and buffalo hides. About six or seven feet
from the ponies' heels are placed two crossbars about three or four feet
apart, connected by weaving willow brush from one crossbar to the other,
between these shafts, or poles, hitched to the pony. Upon this woven
space or "hold" are placed the household goods, the folded tents or
tepees, and lastly, their children and decrepit Indians.
It is not unusual to see several thousand of these strange vans moving
together, their trains being sometimes three or four miles in length.
Then their politeness might also be spoken of, for while it is true that
they have a traditional politeness, it is not a matter of history. Their
sledges were never in the public road but at least 10 to 20 rods outside
of the road in the sage brush and cactus, leaving the road free for the
Stage Company's mail coach.
In all the different books I have ever read, I have never seen one word
of praise for any courtesy the Indians gave us during those frontier
days, but instead I find nothing but abuse. The Indian is the only
natural born American and the only people to inhabit North America
before the discovery by Columbus. This land we so greatly love
rightfully belonged to the Red Man of the forest, and it is my opinion
that they had as much right to protect their own lands as do we in this
century. The novelists howl about the depredations committed by the
Indian, but their ravings are made more to sell their books and to
create animosity than for any good purposes.
The Eastern people eagerly read everything they found that abused the
Indians, and the Indians in those days had no presses in which to make
known their grievances. The only thing left was to get vengeance
wherever he found a white man. "To me belongeth vengeance and
recompense." Personally I blame the press for loss of life to both the
Indian and the white men, for having schooled the white man erroneously.
Travelers crossing the plains were always on the defensive, and ever
ready to commence war on any Indian who came within the radius of their
firearms. When I was a boy I read in my reader: "Lo, the cowardly
Indian." The picture above this sentence was that of an Indian in war
paint, holding his bow and arrow, ready to shoot a white man in
the back.
The novelists write many things of how Kit Carson shot the Indians. Kit
Carson was a personal friend of mine, and when I read snatches to him
from books making him a "heap big Indian killer," he always grew furious
and said it was a "damn lie," that he never had killed an Indian, and if
he had, that he could not have made the treaties with them that he had
made, and his scalp would have been the forfeit. At one time Kit Carson
went on an Indian raid with Colonel Willis down into Western Indian
Territory. He volunteered to go with Colonel Willis to protect him and
his soldiers, and at this very time Colonel Henry Inman tells of Kit
Carson being on the plains of the Santa Fe Trail, with a large company
of soldiers under his command, shooting Indians.
This is a mis-statement of Colonel Inman. Kit Carson never had a company
of soldiers, was not a military man, and at no time raided the Indians.
As will be seen in another chapter of this book, he was simply a scout
and protector for the soldiers. Like Dryden, however, "I have given my
opinion against the authority of two great men, but I hope without
offense to their memories." Kit Carson said that the Indian, as a
people, are just as brave as any people. Their warriors were not
expected to go out as soldiers with a commanding officer, but each was
to protect himself. That, in their opinion, was the only way to carry
on war.